In the summer of 1997 a giant “W” emerged from behind the clouds, like one of those big ass spaceships in Independence Day, taking position over New York’s five boroughs, pregnant with the hip hop havoc it was about to unleash on the city below. Full disclosure, I stole the W over the city analogy from my friend Apollo, but that’s really what it felt like as we waited for the Wu-Tang Clan’s highly anticipated second album, Wu-Tang Forever, to drop. Later that year, on tour with my band, I would meet small town whiteboys from Kittery, Maine who could recite every Wu-Tang album skit verbatim, even though couldn’t decipher the group’s complex Staten Island slanguage. Kids carried dice but couldn’t even play cee-lo, yo.

The 2007 documentary Wu: The Story of The Wu-Tang Clan, which first aired on BET and is now available for streaming on Hulu, tries to enter the 36 Chambers and chronicle the complicated history of the legendary hip hop group, a Herculean task given the group’s many players and career plot twists. While the production values are low budget, and many parts of the story are neglected in pursuit of a broad general arc, it’s still fun viewing and manages to capture the heart and the soul of the group.

Writer, director and narrator Gerald Barclay intertwines his own story into that of the group. It’s kind of weird, but also kind of works. Barclay recalls moving to Staten Island in 1983 and growing up with various future Wu-Tang members in the rough and tumble Park Hill section of Staten Island. After getting a start in filmmaking he directed some of the group’s earliest music videos and featured them on his New York-area cable access show the New York Party Scene. Footage from the show captures the group filled with excitement and braggadocio as they record their groundbreaking debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). The record’s seismic impact would prove to be well earned.

Hip hop had a long history of posse cuts, tracks where established artists brought out their friends and often protégés to introduce them to the world. Some of these tracks, such as “The Symphony” by Wu-Tang hero Marley Marl and the Juice Crew, are among the greatest hip hop recordings of all time. Wu-Tang essentially turned the idea into an ideal, oftentimes featuring up to 10 MCs on a single track, each one driving the other to heights of lyrical greatness, rapping over the RZA’s masterful production, his dark, grimey, claustrophic mixes evoking the overcrowded high rise housing projects and back alley street games the group spoke of.

While the music of the Wu-Tang Clan is prominently featured in the documentary, there are no new interviews with the actual members of the group. Instead, Barclay speaks to people connected to the group, such as Wu-Tang Corp. CEO Mitchell “Divine” Diggs and road manager Popa Wu. While normally this approach would seem like a cop out, filler interviews to make up for the lack of access to the actual stars, with the Wu-Tang Clan it makes sense, since the group itself and their music is only part of their greater story.

Wu-Tang were pioneers in business, signing with Loud Records as a group, but with the individual MCs free to sign solo deals with other record labels. As Diggs says, “It was unheard of in the music industry.” They were also the first hip hop group whose t-shirts became a vital fashion accessory, not unlike the classic rock and heavy metal bands whose marketing techniques they often emulated. Recognizing the demand, the group opened up a retail store on Staten Island before expanding into Wu Wear, which offered apparel and footware, and other merchandise.

Wu-Tang Clan’s history goes by fast, and while some details are overlooked, it keeps the momentum surging forward. The group forms, gets signed, and makes their mark in short order and are soon one of the biggest names in hip hop. Footage from their 1997 tour shows an adoring multi-racial crowd singing along to every word, girls crying as if they’re watching The Beatles. However, success bred division. As Loud Records CEO Steve Rifkind says, “They were still a family but they weren’t living in the same house anymore.” Charismatic wildcard Ol’ Dirty Bastard fared worst, enjoying the temptations of fame to the fullest, resulting in prison time and bad business deals. His 2004 death from a drug overdose is seen by some as a sacrifice that was made to bring the group back together, which they did during the production of the documentary.

Wu: The Story of The Wu-Tang Clan is far from a great piece of filmmaking or a great music documentary. It is, as famed DJ Bobbito Garcia says in describing the sound of the group itself, “R-A-W, RAW!” The camera work is amateurish, there are typos in the graphics, the editing is clunky and clumsy. However, in its own ramshackle way, it is a far more authentic representation of the Wu-Tang Clan than anything HBO might get a big name Hollywood director to produce. At times it’s like watching home movies, and indeed members RZA, GZA, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, as well as Mitchell Diggs and Popa Wu, are all blood relatives. Until Ken Burns drops an eight-part PBS documentary on the group, it’ll have to do. And that’s what the group deserves, an epic that covers their litany of achievements and adventures and does them justice. As rapper Raekwon says at the documentary’s end, speaking of Wu-Tang’s many triumphs, “You never gonna find 10 ill n****s until the next millennium.”

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.